Legally, you can't agree to any form of contract without being shown the contract (or hearing it if its spoken etc) so if the agreement is on the disk, legally its completely irrelevant what that sticker says as you haven't read the agreement so legally can't accept it.

Of course you can, hence spoken contracts. A prime example of this is the displaying of things such as "this company accepts no damage for any theft or damage to your car or personal property while parking in our facilities"

You don't sign anything, and you are only given a warning, but so long as this is clearly post marked before you enter the premises and pay for your parking, you have legally accepted a contract where they are no longer at fault for any damage or theft to you.

You clearly didn't pay that much attention to my comment, or see the bit where I said "or hearing it if its spoken etc".

I never said you had to sign or anything, just see the contract or hear it, or a more general term I suppose would be made aware of it. If there was a sign in a car park saying "this company accepts no damage for any theft or damage to your car or personal property while parking in our facilities", thats them showing a contract, so by parking there you are agreeing to the contract they are showing you.

If they didn't have a sign, you got your car stolen and they said "ahh, well its our policy that you park here at your own risk" it would be irrelevant, as you hadn't been informed of the contract you were entering, so they would still be liable for damages etc, because you hadn't been informed of the contract you were entering, so wouldn't have entered one.

That's exactly what I just said mate, in retrospect, I should have paid more attention to your comment, and I thought I saw something's wrong with it, but there's no need to regurgitate exactly what I just said.

To me, it seems I said "you can't agree to any form of contract without being shown the contract", to which you replied "Of course you can", then said "A prime example of this is the displaying of things such as "this company accepts no damage" etc, which to me read as "an example of when you can agree to a contract without reading it is..."

Maybe thats not what you meant, if it isn't, my apologies, its pretty late, i'm playing minecraft on my other screen and I feel a bit like ****, so i'm not paying the most attention atm

Hey guys. A little bit of information to share with you on the acceptance of terms before the viewing of them. Terms when it comes to digital media fall into three categories. Shrink wrap, Click Wrap, and Browse Wrap. Shrink wrap refers to accepting terms of software as soon as you remove the wrapping off of the package. Click wrap refers to, "clicking here, you accept the terms..." and browse wrap usually refers to accepting terms on a website due to use.

What we have here is shrink wrap acceptance. If they say, "removing the seal constitutes acceptance" then some part of the Agreement is on the outside of the box. For the case that epitomizes this, look up ProCD v. Zeidenberg. The courts have dictated that even though some terms are not on the outside of the box, opening them still concludes agreement. Usually, the agreement comes from the use of the software. This is the majority opinion of the courts. There is no distinct "yes or no" if this is acceptable. Those three types of agreements are usually debated as to their legitimacy.

TL;DR This can be considered as acceptance of the agreement if you use the software at the very least. There is a jurisdictional split with the majority saying it's okay.

So... they could put inside "We also get to enslave your family to create abominations of technology," and on the outside put some other bit of the Terms and Agreements, and it'd be okay?
I slowly become more and more paranoid.

Haha not so much. Believe it or not, there is a limit as to what you can contract someone to do. If I say, "I pay you $5,000 dollars to kill my wife", technically speaking, the contract fits all that is needed to create a valid one. However, the court can invalidate a contract due to public policy. It also has a statute in every state making murder illegal so that helps as well as with the slavery aspect. But I like your thinking. Generally, if the contract requires you to do something that the court has deemed against public policy, or breaks a law, then the contract is unenforceable.

That's where the argument comes in. Even though it hasn't been deemed by the courts as wrong, so has everything else before it's been tried. I plan to actually go into the digital license types of law so we'll see how that pans out. The courts start could to trend that would limit the scope of software and its ability to "know your computer". It seems it would be fair to impose a limit on the scope of software to do what is deemed as necessary for it's function. I don't think knowing all of the files on your computer is. I'd have to read it.

That's ****** up. The potential there seems unlimited and that's the argument that should be made. They very well may be acting in good faith and using the software in a very limited fashion, such as crash rates or frequency of game use. But the wording does provide a huge potential for a market user profile. This would be tough to argue against it without proof that they are doing something you could argue is against public policy. BUT I wouldn't say not to make the argument. The courts often times come up with their own reasoning that something is against public policy that isn't the ideas of the lawyers. Who knows...it's a crap shoot at this point. At most would would happen is this clause would become void and they EA would have to make a new one limited the scope of the type of data collected and the use of it. Keep an eye out in the news about other software. From there you can probably see where the trend is going. If you want to know more, feel free to ask.

I will, thanks.
And yeah, I don't trust EA with that. I have heard, but not yet confirmed, that Google has the same policy, but seeing as Google is a more trustworthy in my opinion, of course company than EA, I'll trust them with the ability.

Most don't have the full agreements, just a kind of mini one. The majority of full agreements are multiple pages that include everything. The ones in leaflets are normally just stuff like "don't copy this, if you **** it up, its your fault, and by opening this, you agree to read the full agreement and if you don't, can't use the product"

Only if its able to be read before you can break the seal. And lets face it, the majority of EULAs are digital now a days, so unless this did come with a paper agreement, its not legal (and to be honest, i'd guess it didn't, generally if they give you the disk in a paper sleeve, they probably won't print one. Well, most of the paper case disks I have didn't)

Unless you sign it it is not legally binding and/or enforceable. They can't in any way shape or form prove that you did accept it. In fact they can't do anything if you claim you modified the installer in question to not show the EULA.

Even if he broke the seal, there is no evidence that it was HIM who broke it. Therefore, there was only 1 party to the so called "contract" which means that unless they use forensics such as fingerprints on the sticker to prove it was him who did it, he never agreed to ****.